Demolition of The 26 Commissars Memorial
On January 2009, the Baku authorities’ started demolition of the 26 Commissars Memorial, and the works were soon completed. The moument site itself had been fenced off since July 2008. The remains of the commissars were reburied at Hovsan Cemetery on 26 January 2009, with participation of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian clergy who conducted religious ceremonies.
The dismantling was opposed by some local left-wingers and by the Azerbaijan Communist Party in particular. It also upset Armenia as the Armenian public believed that the demolition and reburial was motivated by the reluctance of the Azerbaijanis (because of the Nagorno-Karabakh War) to have ethnic Armenians buried in the center of their capital. Another scandal happened when Azerbaijani press reports claimed that during the exhumation only 21 bodies were discovered out of expected 26 and that "Shahumian and four other Armenian commissars managed to escape their murderers". This report was quashed by Shahumian's granddaughter Tatyana, now living in Moscow, who told the Russian daily Kommersant that:
"It is impossible to believe that they weren’t all buried. There is a film in the archives of 26 bodies being buried. Apart from this, my grandmother was present at the reburial."
Read more about this topic: 26 Commissars Memorial
Famous quotes containing the word memorial:
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)